Welcome to the 66th episode of the Mediatwits podcast, with Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali as co-hosts. Sadly, this marks the last episode with Rafat Ali as co-host and our last episode of the year. In the new year, Mediatwits will be revamped as more of a weekly roundtable discussion moderated by Mark Glaser. But our last show was a fascinating one, an in-depth discussion on the state of the book publishing business, the future of print books and how e-books might evolve. Our guests were O'Reilly's Joe Wikert, Movable Type Management's Jason Allen Ashlock and BiblioCrunch CEO Miral Sattar. How can traditional book publishers and literary agents survive in a digital future, and will print books become endangered?

Welcome to the 65th episode of the Mediatwits podcast, with Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali as co-hosts. The big news is News Corp. shutting the tablet-only publication The Daily, which was losing millions and not gaining enough traction. What did they learn from that experiment? Our show is largely about science, with a look at unmanned airspace vehicles (UAVs) or drones coming to journalism. What does the future portend for drones and will they invade privacy as well as domestic airspace? We spoke to Matt Waite from the Drone Journalism Lab as well as Katy Culver from the University of Wisconsin.

And then there's the wildly popular NASA.gov website, with photos, videos and interactive features for space buffs. The site is planning its first revamp since 2007, and is including the public in those plans by letting them come up with ideas and vote them up online. We spoke to NASA.gov manager Brian Dunlap, who's been running the site since 1995, for his insight.

Welcome to the 64th episode of the Mediatwits podcast, with Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali as co-hosts. We're back from the Turkey Day break and there's more news than ever: Jeff Zucker takes the reins at CNN; Marissa Mayer is leading a renaissance at Yahoo; and Facebook is shifting its privacy rules -- again. But the biggest story is the release of the Leveson Inquiry's massive report after nine months of testimony, considering new press regulation in the U.K. after the phone-hacking scandal. We talk to MediaShift correspondent Tristan Stewart-Robertson, who says that the Inquiry only wants regulation of mainstream press and is not considering blogging or the rising digital media in Britain.

Plus, we've been wowed by a new mashup called "The Beat":http://sm.rutgers.edu/thebeat/, taking photos from Instagram and placing them where they were taken with Google Earth images. It's striking to look at hashtags such as "#sandy":http://sm.rutgers.edu/thebeat/?q=sandy or "#drunk":http://sm.rutgers.edu/thebeat/?q=drunk. While it's a fascinating way to give context to Instragram photos, it also brings up privacy issues. Are people sharing too much on photo-sharing sites about their locations? We talk to Rutgers' Mor Naaman and Abe Stanway about their project.

Welcome to the 63rd episode of the Mediatwits podcast, with Mark Glaser and Dorian Benkoil as co-hosts. Rafat Ali is off this week. Who's watching you online and what do they know about you? A lot of people are tracking you and they know a lot. Even the former head of the CIA now knows that emails don't exist in the ether. We talk about the ramifications of the Gen. Petraeus scandal, as well as living our lives online. Josh Stearns of the Free Press joins us to talk about his recent article for MediaShift calling on companies that collect our data to help fund a digital literacy campaign so we can educate people about online tracking.

Then we turn to the Ford Foundation, which made headlines this year with large grants to the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post to help them hire more reporters to boost coverage of important issues. It's the first time Ford's journalism division has funded for-profit media operations. Ford Foundation's Jonathan Barzilay and NYU's Jay Rosen join us to talk about the grants, and what Ford aims to get from them. Will more news orgs look to grants in the future?

Welcome to the 62nd episode of the Mediatwits podcast, with Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali as co-hosts. This week is a special edition of the podcast, with a focus on the coming election and the role of digital and social media leading up to it. But just as the political campaigns had to adjust to Hurricane Sandy, we also couldn't ignore the biggest story of the week. Rafat had to live in a hotel for a couple days and his workmates in New York are still without power. We spoke to WNYC's Caitlin Thompson and Washington Post's Cory Haik about how those sites covered Sandy in real-time, and the lessons they learned that will help them on Election Day.

We also went deep into politics, bringing on Pew Internet's Aaron Smith to give us some stats on social media use this election cycle, and Sunlight Labs' Tom Lee to tell us about their efforts at bringing transparency to the massive amounts of money being injected into the campaigns. How will that change the way we get news on Election Day? Will it be another dual-screen or multi-screen experience for political junkies?

Welcome to the 61st episode of the Mediatwits podcast, with Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali as co-hosts. This week is a very special edition of the podcast, with an in-depth interview with "minor TV personality" John Hodgman, a regular correspondent on "The Daily Show" and the "PC" in the Mac vs. PC ads from Apple. Hodgman talked about his new book "That Is All," where he continues to deconstruct the expert. He also talks about his love for Twitter (not for Facebook), as well as Apple products. Will he be first in line for the iPad Mini? No, but that doesn't mean he can't appreciate all the new improvements that Apple makes.

Speaking of the iPad Mini, our second segment is a discussion about the announcement of the 7.9-inch tablet and how it stacks up against the other smaller tablets such as the Kindle Fire HD and Google Nexus 7. If you were buying one as a Christmas gift, which one should you get? We asked our gadget experts Nicole Lee of Engadget and Matt Buchanan of BuzzFeed. They also discussed the new Microsoft Surface and whether it stands a chance in a world of Fandroids and iSheep.

Welcome to the 60th episode of the Mediatwits podcast, with Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali as co-hosts. We were recording the podcast when the big news came down that Newsweek had decided to end its print edition. Can a digital-only Newsweek survive with all the cut-throat competition online? This week also saw the launch of Circa, a new type of mobile news app that collects the "atomic parts" of stories -- facts, quotes and images -- and puts them into running stories with alerts to updates. We talked to Circa founding editor David Cohn as well as PandoDaily's Sarah Lacy about the prospects for Circa now and in the future.

After a recent story in the New York Times about BlackBerry users being seen as the "black sheep" of the smartphone world, we talked with a couple BlackBerry power users who still have faith in the struggling platform. The Atlantic's Zvika Krieger and CIO.com's Al Sacco both spoke up for BlackBerry users and said as content creators (and people who like the dedicated keyboard) there's still life in the BlackBerry in an age of iPhones and Androids.

Welcome to the 59th episode of the Mediatwits podcast, with Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali as co-hosts. This week is a special edition of the podcast completely focused on the challenges of online services such as YouTube, Facebook and others who have to balance free speech and hate speech while serving global audiences. The latest example being "The Innocence of Muslims" video that was posted on YouTube, and temporarily removed in Libya and Egypt by the service, later having them restored. Was it the right decision or too little, too late? Our guests include the World Policy Institute fellow Susan Benesch, EFF's Trevor Timm and legal scholar Jonathan Peters.

Welcome to the 58th episode of the Mediatwits podcast, with Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali as co-hosts. This week, we take a look at the changes in coverage of the presidential debate, with live-streaming online, instant fact-checks and added context, and even "live-GIF'ing." Tumblr's Christoper Price and the Sunlight Foundation's Bill Allison talk about the hits and misses during the debates and how @FiredBigBird went viral. Does it add more to the debate or is it all a big distraction?

Then we look deeper at the challenges for mobile advertising. For years, experts said mobile ads would rule, and now with so many more people getting news on mobile devices, the time has come. So why are they falling short? We talked to the IAB's Joe Laszlo, AdAge's Jason Del Rey and consultant Chetan Sharma to find out how advertisers and publishers can improve the mobile ad experience. Simply repurposing online ads on mobile isn't the answer, but what is?

Welcome to the 57th episode of the Mediatwits podcast, with Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali as co-hosts. This week, we take a deep dive into "responsive design," a new design philosophy that creates consistent-looking sites on the web, smartphones and tablets. It started with the Boston Globe and now is coming to the USA Today website and the new Quartz e-magazine from Atlantic Media. We talked to Fantasy Interactive's Stephen Carpi, who worked on USAToday.com's design, and Quartz senior editor Zach Seward about their designs, how users would react, and what it would mean for new types of ad formats.

In the wake of managers buyout out Village Voice Media, and splitting off the Backpage.com sites, we decided to think more about alternative weekly newspapers and how they can evolve and survive in the digital age. Media critic and professor Dan Kennedy, who has written extensively for the Boston Phoenix, joined our discussion along with Tiffany Shackelford of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia. What mobile initiatives are working for alt-weeklies, and can big town publications survive in an overloaded ecosystem of media outlets?